Four novels: dewinding competing, indulging and breaking free

“She thought of her sisters, of other women, of herself, greeting each other in restaurants. That quick penetrating glance. Searching each other's faces for tiny signs that the other has aged just a little since the last time, that something enviable had begun to desert them. It never mattered whether you found what you were looking for, or failed to find it; you looked away with disappointment,either way.”

The author of “Such Good Friends” has written a chronicle about four rich Jewish sisters from New York City who are the heiresses to a large department store fortune. The novel follows them, now in their late thirties, as they seduce one another's husbands and lovers, pressure their children into nervous breakdowns and despair, compete over their beauty and possessions, and, in the main incident treated here, obtain, use, ruin and discard the latest husband of one of their number.

They are horrible people, and their author depicts them here pitilessly and with an almost ferocious relish. What's missing is her purpose in doing so and why she has thought their lives worth a novel. The flap copy, which is written with a women's libcrationist consciousness that is entirely absent from the novel itself, explains that it is because they are “princesses” who “are objects themselves, rather than rulers” and “must be kept busy consuming things; otherwise they consume people.” This is a novel that, in protesting too much about the games of status and possession and the affectations of the rich, gives them a bigger advertisement than they've had in a long time.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on October 15, 1972, on Page BR2 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Four novels: dewinding competing, indulging and breaking free. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe